


there had to be an answer

by midnightkey



Series: a softer world [1]
Category: Megamind (2010)
Genre: Deaf Character, Self-Discovery, Superheroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 03:24:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7996831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightkey/pseuds/midnightkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>baby doom knew they all had to <a href="http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=2">die</a>.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	there had to be an answer

**i.**

she grows up with clark, like it's the easiest thing in the world. he has superpowers and she does not, and she knows why clark always stays on the ground when he could fly. because no one knew that metro man was alive, and that it - superpowers - had caused such a rift in power and among others before that it couldn't happen again.

there is a yellow, glowing thing in the lab that could give her those powers, and there is another thing that could easily take them away. 

she doesn't know if the latter would work on clark.

**ii.**

by all logic, clark should not know how to use his powers, or have such control over them as he does now, but elle is a smart girl and she knows all the isolated places to hide. 

the schoolhouse is their favorite - no one comes out here, and the schoolhouse is abandoned save for metro man, and there are plenty of old, disposable things for clark to _~~destroy~~_ \--practice on. 

fate seemed to place clark in a hero's role and her as something lesser, though in the right circumstances clark could easily be a villain and her the hero that saved them all. she can't imagine the cost. there are things that even intelligence can't solve. 

**iii.**

they have yet to figure out whether their alien dna gave them anything special - besides clark's superpowers, and her being deaf, which meant she had an excuse to ignore people she didn't like - but they know this much: it will always set them apart, and some would never see past that and blindly accept it. or maybe they would, because they looked human, and that meant they were safe from being feared or being shunted aside. 

**iv.**

today, she found out that her body could heal itself at an alarmingly fast rate. broken bones cracked together in a matter of hours and sprained ankles in a matter of minutes, and internal injuries in a matter of seconds. the smaller things - bruises, paper cuts, and the like - always took the normal time to heal, like her body was prioritizing the bigger things first. 

she tells clark this before her parents - a habit she has developed over the years, because she knows that he will keep a secret to the end - and the first thing he says to her about it is to not go charging into danger to test it out. 

(the scientific method is something she has known since she was very little, growing up in and around the sciences. with clark, though, she never goes past "ask a question" or "do background research," because clark is most of her impulse control.) 

**v.**

clark ends up in harvard medical and she in harvard engineering, and she doesn't know if it was always the plan to go to harvard or if it was just always the plan for the two of them to never be too far apart, even in college. 

it's funny, clark studying medicine when he has regenerative abilities far beyond any normal human's. he jokes that it's because of her and her tendency to jump into things headfirst, but there is something there that is not entirely playful. 

biomed engineering and applied mathematics is old hat for her (having gotten the genius gene) and this - college - feels tame compared to what she and clark could do without it. 

the day they return from college is the night when megamind and metro man go missing. 

**vi.**

with no hero (heroes?), metro city is left defenseless against villains, though in the years she and clark been born, fewer and fewer villains had tried to attack or take over. she wonders if they'll try again now. 

metro city had been theirs for the taking, and now it was theirs to defend. 

**vii.**

the scientific method:

ask a question ( _what happened to metro man and megamind_ )

do background research ( _they went missing the night of the day we came back from college_ )

form hypothesis ( _they were taken, they were kidnapped, worst case scenario they are dead_ )

test your hypothesis

analyze your data

report your results--

not even this can help her now. but there had to be an answer.

**viii.**

their villain is certainly _something_. what is terrifying about it is this: they are fighting an intangible thing that did not hesitate, nor exhibit restraint - all it did was take and take and take. here, it was changing the game, like it had nothing to lose. and it didn't _have_  anything to lose, because it was darkness incarnate. 

they were facing an endless uphill climb, and it stops midway when clark throws her aside and takes the hit himself. 

she rises from this anew, and clark rises from this possessed, and neither of their bodies are really their own anymore - she has powers and clark is no longer a hero.

**ix.**

the cost of this role reversal is this: her freedom of choice, her best friend, and the chance to be a hero, even without powers. 

being a hero was much different than doing right. 

but then again, doing right didn't always make one a hero, at least in the public's eyes. 

**x.**

she wonders if the very syringe that gave her these powers could withhold their villain, without taking away clark's powers and corrupting them in the process. (she thinks of removing the ones given to her and giving it to clark in that particular scenario.)

another scenario: miraculously, clark comes out of this unscathed and their villain is merely messing with her mind. it is less likely than the first scenario, but a possibility, nonetheless. 

a third scenario, much less likely than the first and second: they come out of this unscathed and find their missing parents in the process. 

of all of these, elle is expecting the first. 

and for the first time since their villain had claimed clark as its own, she's right.

**xi.**

the pill that pops out of the syringe is the opposite of the golden one that contained metro man's powers. this one is dark and dull and felt like the smooth surface of a chalkboard. nonetheless, it is a dangerous thing, and metro man and megamind are still missing. 

she gives clark his powers back, by removing the ones given to her and giving it to him. some of them, she's discovered, have remained, or at the very least enhanced the alien abilities she'd had - bones now healed in a matter of minutes, sprains in a matter of seconds, and internal injuries almost instantaneously. where intelligence had previously been her only strong suit, now she was physically stronger than before. not at clark's level, of course, but anything lighter than half a ton was fair game. 

she doesn't get the flight or the ability to see through things, unfortunately. minion isn't very much help in figuring out why this is, her retaining some of the powers while the syringe took others away, and why the same thing didn't happen with tighten (hal, now, who is out of jail but they haven't seen him since. minion says he moved out of state, though to where minion doesn't know, though he offers to check). 

with clark's powers restored and hers enhanced, metro city had two heroes now, and one answer she does know is this: metro city had always been theirs. 

**Author's Note:**

> this probably didn't make sense sorry i had the idea like a year ago


End file.
